Gore looks as energized and purposeful as Mother Earth looks sickly and mad as hell, which is no doubt why many commentators suggested it was less an environmental action statement than a test balloon for future political ambitions.

Sardonic and steeped in the tumultuous history of the former Yugoslavia, this absurdist comedy of contemporary mores can be appreciated even without intimate knowledge of its specific cultural context.

That this deceptively quiet crime thriller about an ex con's troubled homecoming sat on the shelf for four years before finding commercial distribution speaks volumes about both the voracious appetite for sand/surf/summer-break cliches and Hollywood's willingness to pander to it.

Billed as a dark comedy, brothers Jay and Mark Duplass' shaggy, ultra-low-budget tale of a tense New York-to-Atlanta road trip is more accurately a relationship-hell drama peppered with strangled laughs.

There's nothing subtle about Pelegri and Harari's culture-clash romp, but it's sometimes frantically funny; that it's thoroughly forgettable is an issue only if you expect it to do more than poke easy fun at the thorny issues it raises.

Crowder and Dower's film is a refreshing reminder that without Ross and the Erteguns, pundits would have had to coin an entirely different term to describe "soccer moms," since without the Cosmos' brief and shining moment in the sun, suburban soccer leagues would be as rare as collegiate boccie tournaments.

For all its contrivances, the film is cheerfully rude and surprisingly generous to the mothers, most of whom find sizzling new romances at an age when their American counterparts are reduced to sexless dithering or played as humiliating punch lines to jokes about horny old hags.

Ultimately, Dick subordinates scholarship to passion, which may be exactly what it takes to convince mainstream moviegoers that they should care about a system that shortchanges THEM when they go to the movies.

Togman, an associate professor in political science at Seton Hall University, paints a clear-eyed and unsentimental picture of Sheree's efforts, and there are no happy endings for her or for Mary, who's quietly battling breast cancer as she helps Sheree line up paperwork and negotiate with creditors. The film leaves them both where they started: struggling.